On September 12, 2025, the Ethereum Foundation took a bold step in the ongoing quest to bring privacy to blockchain by unveiling a comprehensive new roadmap and rebranding its well-known "Privacy & Scaling Explorations" (PSE) team as the "Privacy Stewards of Ethereum." The announcement, covered by multiple outlets including The Block, Cointelegraph, and Jinse Finance, signals a pivotal shift from speculative research to targeted action aimed at making privacy a core feature of the world’s second-largest blockchain.
The new Privacy Stewards of Ethereum, or PSE, have set their sights on an ambitious goal: to make privacy on Ethereum not just a technical novelty, but a practical, everyday reality for users, developers, and institutions alike. As team member Sam Richards stated in the official roadmap, "Ethereum is on the path to becoming the settlement layer for the world, but without strong privacy, it risks becoming the backbone of global surveillance rather than global freedom. If Ethereum fails to build privacy, it fails to protect the people who rely on it."
So, what’s actually changing? According to the roadmap, privacy solutions are being targeted across nearly every layer of the Ethereum ecosystem: from the protocol and infrastructure to networking, applications, and even wallets. The plan is broken down into three main areas—private writes, private reads, and private proving—each designed to tackle a different aspect of on-chain privacy.
Let’s start with private writes. The goal here is to make private on-chain actions as cheap and seamless as their public counterparts. One of the key projects under this umbrella is the development of the PlasmaFold layer-2 network, an experimental design aimed at enabling private transfers. The PSE team is working on a proof of concept for this technology, with hopes to showcase it at Devconnect, the Ethereum developer conference set for November 17, 2025, in Argentina. In addition to private transfers, there’s a focus on confidential voting and privacy in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications—two areas where transparency can inadvertently expose sensitive information.
Next, private reads. Here, the focus is on allowing users to read data from the blockchain without exposing their identity or intent. This is particularly crucial for privacy-focused applications and individuals wary of surveillance. A major concern addressed in the roadmap is the risk of personal data leakage through remote procedure call (RPC) services. Traditional RPC calls can reveal a user’s IP address or which accounts they’re interested in—information that could be exploited by malicious actors or, in some cases, overzealous regulators. To tackle this, PSE has convened a dedicated working group to explore privacy-preserving RPC solutions.
Then there’s private proving, which the team refers to as "prove anywhere." The aim is to make the generation and verification of zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs—cryptographic tools that can verify information without revealing the underlying data—fast, private, and accessible, even on everyday devices. This could open the door to a new generation of privacy-preserving applications, from identity solutions to private computation within smart contracts.
These technical initiatives are more than just engineering challenges; they reflect a broader philosophical stance. As PSE’s mission statement puts it, "Ethereum deserves to become core infrastructure for global digital commerce, identity, collaboration, and the internet of value. But this potential is impossible without private data, transactions, and identity. We take responsibility within the Ethereum Foundation for ensuring privacy goals at the application layer are reached." The team has committed to working closely with protocol developers to ensure that any necessary changes at the base layer (L1) are made to support "strong, censorship-resistant intermediary-free privacy."
Of course, this push for privacy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The broader context—especially the regulatory environment—adds urgency and complexity to the initiative. The US Department of the Treasury, led by Secretary Scott Bessent, is currently weighing proposals to require government identity checks for decentralized finance (DeFi) smart contracts. These measures, which aim to increase oversight and reduce illicit activity, have drawn sharp criticism from the crypto community. Many see them as a threat to the very ethos of decentralization and privacy that underpins blockchain technology.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder and one of the ecosystem’s most influential voices, has repeatedly underscored the importance of privacy. In April 2025, Buterin warned that transparency—long touted as a feature of blockchain—can actually become a "bug" in the digital age. "Privacy is an essential human right," Buterin has stated, arguing that individuals need protection not only from state overreach but also from the growing power of large, centralized corporations.
The roadmap isn’t just a theoretical exercise. It’s packed with concrete deliverables and timelines. In the next three to six months, PSE aims to make significant strides on several fronts: enabling private transfers via PlasmaFold, advancing confidential voting mechanisms, and developing privacy solutions for DeFi. The team also plans to release a "state of private voting 2025" report, summarizing ongoing efforts and progress in this critical area. In confidential DeFi, the challenge is to design protocols that maintain privacy while still complying with regulatory requirements—a delicate balance, but one that’s increasingly necessary as institutional interest in crypto grows.
Collaboration is a key theme throughout the roadmap. The document credits not only internal Ethereum Foundation contributors but also external experts like independent researcher Oskar Thorén and the Silviculture Society. This cross-pollination of ideas is seen as vital to keeping Ethereum at the cutting edge of privacy innovation.
Yet, the path forward is anything but straightforward. As governments around the world debate how to regulate digital assets, the threat of financial surveillance looms large. The Ethereum Foundation’s renewed focus on privacy is, in many ways, a response to these external pressures—a bid to ensure that the blockchain remains a tool for empowerment, not control.
For the average Ethereum user, these developments could mean a future where sending money, voting in decentralized organizations, or accessing financial services doesn’t require sacrificing personal privacy. For developers and institutions, the roadmap offers a blueprint for building compliant, privacy-preserving applications that can stand up to both technical scrutiny and regulatory oversight.
As the Ethereum Foundation’s Privacy Stewards press ahead, the stakes couldn’t be higher. The choices made in the coming months and years will shape not just the Ethereum ecosystem, but the very nature of digital commerce, identity, and collaboration in the 21st century.
With the world watching, Ethereum’s privacy push stands as a defining test of whether blockchain technology can deliver on its promise of freedom—and at what cost.
